


The Kindness of Strangers

by ebonynemesis



Category: Naruto
Genre: 5+1 Things, Clueless Naruto, M/M, Multi, Other, disguises, kyuubi has ruts too, mentions of Naruhina's marriage and family, sensei cares in his own aloof way, weird spiritual fox-demon hetero sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-04
Updated: 2018-05-22
Packaged: 2019-05-02 01:05:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,071
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14533338
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ebonynemesis/pseuds/ebonynemesis
Summary: Five times Naruto didn’t recognise Kakashi in disguise +1 time when he did.





	1. 5

 

 

 

 

> ‘Whoever you are, I’ve always depended on the kindness of strangers.’ -Williams, Tennessee, _A Streetcar Named Desire_ (1947)

# 1\. Shinigami

 

Death comes early to him, moments after birth; when the first light registered in his new eyes is the burning of the village that shunned his mother until it fell in line under his father's leadership—tapered flames licking the dark outlines of roofs and walls and fences of his future home; when the first sensation of warmth is the blood dripping from the wound on his mother’s torso where a demon claw has pierced through her, skewering her onto her husband, and the second being the searing heat on his stomach where the cursed seal draws said demon into his fresh trembling body.

From the night ablaze with chaos emerges a solitary figure in black who carries him away into the woods. Naruto has no recollections of this, but years later when he breaches the gates of life to pull his own teacher out from the blank world of limbo in between, the Kyuubi would realise that the pale limp hands are the same which clutched the baby on that night—the fingers of the shinigami.

The only motion stopping the beast from breaking free from the feeble helpless body: the spirit of death and the promise of life that traces the swirling seal on the wrinkled newborns skin over and over and over until the village, after dousing the fire, would find the dead bodies of their leader and his wife collapsed on top of each other, their infant child asleep, tummy red from repeated friction.

Much later, Naruto would unmake the connection, but in his fresh mind, the growling, prickly presence in his grumbling gut joins the shinigami in a silent lullaby that luls the orphaned child that is to be the prison to the beast to sleep with uncertain and trembling palms of the stranger, and icy fingers of the harbinger of death. 

* * *

 

# 2\. Neighbour  

 

When he comes to, the lady next door is cradling him in her arms.

-Adults are perverts.

Naruto, five, mumbles, muddy water dripping down from his hair.

-Mmm.

His neighbour hums, neither agreeing nor disagreeing. She’s new, moved in only last Th-Friday, the fifth day, Naruto counts opening his hands so all fingers stretch out straight before folding them against his palm, monday-one-tuesday-two-wednesday-three-thursday-for-friday.

-I saw Asuma-ji kissing a red-eyed girl shinobi behind the fence on top of the cliff today, the faces cliff.

-Kunoichi, a female ninja is called a kunoichi.

Her breasts are pillowy and soft, she has a hunch and the wrinkles on her face are faint, like they’ve been stretched out then plumped up.

-Are you a kunoichi?

-Do I look like a ninja to you?

She has wiry silvery hair that Naruto tries to touch before falling back, his head spinning.

-You didn’t ask.

-Hmm?

-You didn’t ask how I got up there, behind the fence, on top of face cliff. Only ninjas go up there, I am a ninja, so are you. I can tell, because I’m a ninja.

She laughs.

-So what are you doing outside my door, ninja?

-He put his hands up her shirt. Sandaime-gramps says you should never put your hands under anyone’s clothes because it makes you a pervert, Asuma-ji must be a pervert.

-Hmm, you locked yourself out of the house didn’t you?

Naruto pretends he’s a kettle and whistles air out the corner of his mouth.

She grins and doesn’t pursue the interrogation. has eyes the shape of a willow leaf, her skin smells like turmeric, Naruto wrinkles his nose.

-You smell weird.

-And do you think you smell good yourself right now? You’re getting muddy water all over my clothes, and the floor.

-Adults are gross.

The child repeats.

Sandaime-gramps had given him a rope to tie his keys around his neck, he told Naruto not to lose it otherwise he won’t be able to go home. The other kids called him a dog and jingled the keys like a leash. He got into a fight, managed to sneak in two punches before being overcome in numbers, so he did a cowardly thing and ran to the forests behind the cliffs where he knew the others won’t follow because their parents told them not to go there and they listen to the words of their mums and dads.

Naruto listened, there were no words there for him warning him not to climb the dangerous cliffs where Asuma-ji and a red-eyed girl-nin—kunoichi had scared him into a bad tumble down the hill into a muddy puddle, there was only the bubbling cacophony in his brain as he threw the keys and leash into the mud.

His stomach grumbles, he hates how the silver haired lady smells like food.

The door whines on its hinges as it jars open, Naruto peers into the darkness in shock, for a moment he thought he saw a shadow of a puppy, but Kiba would never let Akamatsu run around by himself, so Naruto decides to dismiss it as imagena—imagefi—inamiga—as make-belief.

The lady sets him down on the ground of the apartment, unfurnished, empty, because she’s new, just moved in. Naruto grabs the leg of her pants.

-Are you a ninja, a kunoichi?

She lifts a finger to her lips.

-Himitsu.

* * *

 

# 3\. Kitsune

 

He peels at the hitai-ate as it sticks to his forehead with sweat.

‘You should just go find Hinata,’ one of his shadow clone says, ‘she’s your girlfriend, more than that, she’s your betrothed, that Hyuga-ojisan hasn’t said anything but he stopped checking in on her everytime you go over to visit, and Hanabi has been not so subtly suggesting dates that bear good fortunes for nuptials.’

He growls at the clone, his fangs bared, his cheeks scored. The clone cowers and disappears in a puff of smoke.

Another clone speaks up: ‘Not Hinata then, how about one of those fan-club members, they’d happily toss themselves in your bedroll.’

He releases that one as well.

‘Oh my god he exploded!’ The ero-jutsu clone exclaims, twin tails swishing back and forth as she holds her cheeks in shock. ‘Hey, how about me? You wouldn’t mind that, right? Hee hee~’

Naruto forms a whirlwind in his bandaged palm, ‘You are a mannequin beneath all that cloud! I made you, I know that!!!’

The gust from his hand blows apart the clouds covering the genital-less crotch, before the illusion is blown away all together.

Croaking laughter behind bars.

Naruto clenches his fist, ‘What are you laughing at, you old menace, this is your fault! You animal!’

_Oh foolish boy, the desire to procreate is one dictated by nature, it’s the reason why anything occupying a part of this world draws its breath._

‘Well why do you need to procreate when you are an immortal spirit! What perverted realm do you come from that you have ruts even living inside my head?! Has there ever even been a female of your kind? You’re full of crap!’

_There was a time when I was more than a voice in your head and sin in your blood, boy. Oh I can sense your thoughts, such crass language, you should feel privileged to be a part of such fortuitous timing, a rut does not occur usually for millennia of cycles._

Naruto crosses his arms, refusing to acknowledge the diverting heat that makes his blood rush downwards.

 _I can sense your thoughts, you know._ The literal demon within him says, _I share a part of your dreams, no, you do not tarnish your betrothed with tainted desires, it is not her arms which you seek in your sleep, she is much too noble in spirit and body, neither is that fierce healer under the tutelage of your village leader, you cherish the child within you who loved the child that she was—the innocence of believing in that kind of absolution. No, I know your desires boy, you have no taste for your hordes of admirers who worship you for the same reason their parents hated you, your lust, boy, I know them for their depraved nature, the forbidden thoughts you keep locked like the cage you built for me, the desire to consume, to possess to_ dominate _—_

‘A whore,’ Naruto stands up, ‘that’s it, I’m going to find a whore.’

*

The reality of the execution proves harder than the seemingly straight-forward plan. Naruto spent weeks perched on the rooftops in the red light district after nightfall, studying patrons and courtesans alike, for one thing, the place looks entirely too crowded for any—operation, he’s afraid of relinquishing control and destroying half of the ochaya. For another, the girls simply lacked—spirit, if Naruto can call it that, chakra reserve sounds too occupational but that is exactly what it feels like, like they are a weak enemy that Naruto doesn’t want to unleash the full extent of his—power.

Naruto grabs his head on his way home on the completion of the third week of this unsuccessful—reconnaissance mission. No mother or father ever taught him how to approach girls, Jiraiya had been a terrible and incompetent flirt who was clearly using the ero-persona to distract from some unresolved feelings, Iruka blushes and stammers and doesn’t offer much when he had tried to broach the subject, he just kept on repeatedly telling Naruto to cherish Hinata, like that had anything to do with this kind of desire. And the others, the other _mentors_ in his life are practically monks! He tried to talk to his comrades, the only one remotely helpful had been Shikamaru of all people, who turned his head as a blush creeped up his pineapple shaped cheeks as he said something along the lines of ‘It’s troublesome but worth it if you’re with the right person’.

When it gets really bad, he goes to the forest to train, he’s felled so many trees he wonders when Tsunade will slap a ‘natural hazard’ sticker on his head again.

And on the first full moon of this dreaded insipid spiral he has dragged himself into, out of the corner of his eyes he sees silver shadow streaks past the windless shadows at the edge of the clearing he had formed thanks to another night of chopping down trees with his bare hands.  

Naruto is alert in an instant, the skin at the back of his neck prickling like there’s fur there standing up in spiked strands, he hears the rumble of the demon, the saliva corroding against his metal prison.

 _Smellsssss deliciousssssss,_ the fox purrs in his mind as his body shoots forward and takes chase.

The silver spirit darts between the tree at unnatural speed, like the shadow of the moon. Soon they’ve traversed dozens of miles, way past the outskirts of the villages, approaching the valley of the end and beyond that, Naruto has never seen anything defy the logic of space like this, even facing Uchiha's doujutsu, there was a spatial and temporal limit that he could subconsciously sense, but nonexistent at this moment, the creature always just ahead of him, two paces in front, no matter how hard he kicks off for the leap.  

A fox, Naruto can make out the bushy tail and the peaked ears amongst the blur. Naruto just hopes that it can shapeshift otherwise he’s going to have to go into five tail or six tail mode because doing the—deed as a human is just not his level no matter how spiritual everything is.

When he manages to pounce on the creature it takes him by surprise, he has no doubt that it only happens because the silver fox has decided to stop running, instead of Naruto managing to find some secret reserve of energy.

The flesh he touches is human, pale and wrapped loosely in a white kimono, the colour of peach-flesh.

‘You can call me kitsune,’ her voice is low and raspy, her chest rising as she makes a show of catching her breath.

‘I’d rather not,’ Naruto wrinkles his nose.

‘Then you can call me whatever you want, onii-chan—Yuki, Usagi, Tsukihime, whatever you want.’ She laughs, Naruto doesn’t know what is funny, but her arms when they wind upon his neck are gentle yet solid, surprisingly, considering the fact that she looks like a wisp of the forest.

Naruto catches her lips, plunging into her soft cavern as he holds her against him, she was warm where he thought she would be cold and it sets the rut ablaze within him, he lets out an inhuman growl which she answers by rumbling back, equally inhuman.

His chakra flares around them, dark orange bubbles bursting from his skin. She rips at his clothing, hands reaching low and wrapping around his heated flesh, her skin unharmed by the leaks of demonic aura.

Naruto realises that she and this monster that he is are one and the same, and a burst of satisfaction blossoms in his chest, a warmth of recognition that he’s no longer the only one of this cursed existence as he lifts her, fits his hands along the curve of her buttocks and holds her body open, above his own thighs.

Liquid heat dribbles against his desire, gathering at his groin, she smells like an overripe plum, a pungent and overwhelming flavour that makes him want to slurp her up, instead, he settles inside her body, which grips him with an iron, furnace clench, so tight he can’t even move.

He howls into her chest as he cums, she cards her long nailed hands through the short hairs at the nape of his neck, he feels like his very being is pulled outwards. Her skin sticking to his own heated sweaty body like soaked cotton.

 _If she wanted to she can take everything,_ Naruto thinks, _she can kill me now and I would not care, she can suck my soul from my cock and I’d go willingly, become a part of her, stop being myself._

Instead she lifts her body off his, his desire pulling free with a wet squelch, as she turns and rolls forward on all fours, presenting herself to him, his own seed dribbling out of her orifice onto her thighs.

Naruto nuzzles her, runs his tongue against the dip at the back of her knees all the way up, to the fold between her thighs and her butt, even further, until his tongue is in her bush and his nose is pressed against her opening, and he’s sucking in breath after breath of her intoxicating scent, _she smells like me_ , he thinks, as he flattens his tongue against the wet folds, feeling her quiver around his lips, _she tastes like me_.

He takes her from behind, mounts her like an animal, his legs crouching on either side of her hips as he drives down again and again at a frenzied pace. She steadies his hips with one clawed hand against his hipbone, mewling as he plays with her breasts, twisting her nipples between his fingers as he cums again inside her.

She grinds her wetness against his sensitive flesh, ‘Do you think you’ll knot me?’ She asks breathlessly.

The dark spirit shrieks inside him as the kyuubi takes over his body and pushes her away, she tumbles, long shiny hair whipping across her white body. Naruto tries to form seals with his hands but find them grasping her neck instead.

 _‘Who are you?’_ The kyuubi asks, the demonic voice tearing through Naruto’s body as he braces his whole strength in trying to close the gate from where the kyuubi has broken free.

One of her screwed close eyes open a slither, and Naruto sees a glimpse of silver iris before they darken suddenly, and a warm hand is pressed against his seal, magnetic touch as he feels the kyuubi being dragged into his body before unconsciousness descends upon him.

*

He’s in the hospital wing when he wakes up, his body cool from evaporation of the sweat, and the heat in his crotch extinguished as the kyuubi doses in his mind, snout laid over orange paws.

Who is she, Naruto asks the beast.

The kyuubi cracks one slit of his blood coloured eyes. _You have more friends watching over you in strange ways, boy, maybe not just friends._

* * *

 

# 4\. Sukea-Nii

 

-Hey, Sukea-niisan, can you take a photo for us?

-Of course, here why don’t we all stand—

-Where is Kakashi-sensei, he’s always disappearing at times like this.

-You wait here, Naruto-kun, I’ll go fetch him.

-Thanks, Sukea-nii, you’re always so kind, unlike that lazy no-good pervy scarecrow-ttebayo. Though, you do look somewhat flushed, do you have a fever?  

-I’m fine Naruto-kun, today’s an important day, why don’t you get everyone else beside the benches over there and you, and, and the bride can stand in the middle, I’ll go set up the camera.

-Sukea-nii, Are you crying?

-Just something in my eye, Naruto-kun.

* * *

# 5\. Anbu

 

Death had came for him too early in life, in the heat of the searing droplets of sticky blood of his parents dripping onto his infant skin, in the threat of the cage within him containing a monster that killed all of his childhood, in cold stones that marked graves of teachers and guardians and friends and families he did not get to save, in the face of darkness that almost swallowed the entire village and the world that he knew of, and now, each day in his jounin years, when he takes s-ranked missions and throws himself in death’s way almost like defiance, trying to goad it to settle the debt of life Naruto owes, borrowed heartbeat and breath like the borrowed chakra flowing through his bandaged right arm.

So, lying in the sludge of a ditch in an unknown country, he expects its visit, anticipates it. The rhythmic tapping of his heart petering towards a final beat, like the slowing claps of an icy hand on the back of a baby as its tempers the small body towards sleep.

There is emptiness where the fox used to reside, a void in his stomach threatening to suck up the warmth in his body, a quietness where the heavy drops of saliva accompanying the long-snouted panting used to be. His jaw too out of socket to form a smile, Naruto instead allows his body to grow a little colder, leak out some of the tension. Sasuke will appreciate my efforts at attempting those mindfulness exercises he goes on about whenever he’s in the village, though this is truly a shameful way to go.

A masked being descends upon him.

Naruto sighs, ‘Rokudaime sent you?’

The figure rolls him on his side and relocate his jaw, Naruto groans through the pain, ‘I thought I lost those damned nin-dogs but he must have some kind of tracker on me, or he sent you to tail me from the beginning, he’s never trusted me, that one.’

He looks at the figure, ‘How fortunate your mask is black and white, like the guards at the gates of hell.’

‘I’ve seen him, you know,’ He’s lifted by the figure and slung over the shoulders like a sack of rice. ‘The shinigami.’

‘He has pale hands. And long spindly fingers.’

The figure sets him down and Naruto sees a flash of metal in its hand and sighs in relief.

‘If you are here to to finish me off, I’m glad, at least, I won’t be dying alone.’

The cold blade presses against him, with only enough force to cut open the bloodied fabric of his clothing, Naruto’s vision tunnels in upon itself, even in his state of shock the fingers pressing gauze against his wound still feel icy cold.


	2. +1

# +1. Hinata

The end, when it comes, is swift, clinical, over before his mind registers the calamity.

He treads across the empty streets, once upon a time filled with souls that needed his protection, towards the cliff-facing house, imprinting trepidation with each footstep in the dust.

She rushes to him as soon as he opens the door, her black hair whipping behind her as she plants her face against his chest, ‘Thank god I sent the children away.’ She says, her voice trembling along with unsteady limbs that encircle him, both comforting him and seeking comfort from him at the same time.

Naruto wants his mind to stop thinking, analysing, rationalising, and preserve the stasis of that moment: in the doorway, with the dust invading their home, and the two of them, husband and wife, intimate and united in the polluted air, at once despairing and reveling in being left behind by the rest of their known world.

Instead, he pries at her arms. She looks almost hurt when she lifts her face, time and motherhood barely left any marks on her visage—her eyes, still innocent and opaque, are perfect as the full moon on the crispest winter night.

Naruto opens his mouth but a rasping sob rips itself out from his chest, his ribcage stinging like something had cracked, even though he knows that his body has mended itself of any damage sustained, in a way his mind will never be able to do.

‘Stop it,’ the dust settling on his shoulders is too heavy, his legs buckle and he grabs at her hands as his knees hits the ground of the foyer, ‘please, just stop it.’

She stills, and for the first time the weight of her soft hands feel more real than that of a ghost. ‘How could you possibly think this would work,’ The tears, hot, bubble out of him as he rubs his face in the pale smooth palms, ‘how could you even believe for one second she would have stayed home and out of the way? She was the first one, sensei! She was the first one to stand in front of me before everyone else, and—she, she was the first to fall…’

The fingers in his grasp elongate, and turn colder, tougher, losing curves and gaining calluses as the disguise fades.

‘I’m sorry.’ Kakashi says, face pale and unreadable behind the mask.

Naruto grabs his collar and pushes him against the wall. For a moment Kakashi considers how fast he would disintegrate if Naruto decided to follow through with an attack, the chakra flames would probably lick him up before Naruto’s fist even connect with his body. But instead, Naruto just gives him a crestfallen look, lets go of his collar as he moves past him, he takes a few unsteady steps as he reaches the staircase, and falls down upon his knees, once again.

Kakashi had faced despairing situations: his only friend crushed beneath a boulder, his father's body swaying from the beams of the ceiling, his mentor and surrogate father skewered upon the talons of a demon, the etched names of his former teammates eroding each day as wind blows past the memorial plaque, a lone figure waiting for him beside a roaring fire that doesn’t manage to fill the void, and now, once again, he’s forced to brace against the icy wind of despair that breaks the back of the strongest shinobi he knows living or dead, and watch as another spirit crumble under the heaviness of reality, possibly defeated for good this time.

Kakashi remembers the heat of the flames the night his sensei died, the night of his successor’s birth—dark flames and smoke that choked him like the rancid breath of a demon, and how for the first time that evening he chose to comfort the child with the facade of a stranger, and the many times afterwards when he tried to shield Naruto with the same approach, and was unsuccessful each time, yet, he persisted, attempting, insipidly, over and over again, to stop some kind of inevitable loss, each time at a distance he thought protected both himself and the one being comforted.

And decades later here he stands, tragedy striking Naruto and him helpless, just like before, with the smoke and dust of the aftermath smothering him, sobering in his own failures.

 _I’m out,_ Kakashi thinks, _my arsenal is empty, and I can no longer fool him, rather, more relevantly, myself_.

He puts a hand on Naruto’s shoulder, who shudders, but doesn’t try to shake Kakashi off.

‘We have work to do.’ Kakashi says.

 

*

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Decided to go with the super depressing but more definitive ending. 
> 
> Thank you for reading, and thanks to the kind souls who leave kudos and reviews you have no idea how elated they make me feel. 
> 
> Feel free to harrass me at ebonynemesis.tumblr.com 
> 
> p.s. There's an alternative end where Naruto finds out about the fox-spirit, I might post that as a separate piece some day (right now it's grown a mind of its own and gotten away from me and is also 6k+ words long and still going)


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